


we cried ourselves a hurricane

by mapped



Series: all here in one bed lay [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Dildos, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Pegging, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Praise Kink, Pre-Series, Strap-Ons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:00:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8012992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James and Miranda cling to each other in their grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we cried ourselves a hurricane

**Author's Note:**

> Intended as a sequel/companion fic to [these wildfires grow and grow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6843337) and [half as happy as we](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7228876), two other stories about Miranda pegging James, set in happier times, though this one stands perfectly well on its own and will make sense even if you haven't read the other two.
> 
> Title from 'Earth' by Sleeping At Last.

She was just finishing a simple meal of bread and broth, halfway through her well-worn copy of _Doctor Faustus_ , when she heard the neighing of a horse in the night air outside. She popped the last chunk of bread into her mouth and closed the book, rising and dusting the crumbs from her dress. 

Through the window, she glimpsed a man in a dark coat, swinging down from a horse.

She could not suppress the delight that radiated within her at the sight. To have him back in the house always felt like a reprieve from the punishment of solitude and tedium she had been condemned to undergo; even arguing with him, something which they engaged in more and more often as time went on, was better than the silence when she was alone, indefinite and unendurable.

She opened the door for him as he walked in with a small sack of items. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No, I ate,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m all right,” she said. “And you?”

“Took a good prize,” he said. “And not a single scrape this time.” He spread his arms proudly. “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

As if there was ever anything for her to report to him. Her daily life was dull beyond measure. Truly, the only times she had ever had news to tell him had been when she had to inform him of Thomas’ suicide, and when she had formulated the plan for him to board the Maria Aleyne and take vengeance for them both.

“I acquired some new chickens,” she said.

“Fantastic,” James said, grinning. He emptied the contents of the sack onto the table: three bottles of wine and two books.

He tossed a bottle of wine into the air and easily caught it again. “Shall we?” he asked, and she nodded.

He uncorked the bottle and poured out two glasses. She breathed in the aroma first, savoured the heady richness of it, redolent of a lost past. James was already halfway through his glass by the time she took a sip, letting the sweet acidic taste of it slowly flood her palate.

An hour later, they were done with the bottle, and James was slouching in his chair, coat off and shirtsleeves rolled up, flipping through one of his new acquisitions and reading passages aloud.

It was _The Rape of the Lock_ , by Alexander Pope. Miranda had never heard of him till now. The poem was only published this year. Listening to it now, Miranda’s first thought was to wonder how famous the man was; was his poetry the talk of the town? There was so much she would never know, now, of the world that she used to inhabit.

It was certainly entertaining and clever, Pope’s employment of epic language and motifs to make a mockery of high society, but Miranda found herself aching for the frivolities and vanities that Pope was poking fun at. She _could_ allow herself to see his point; indeed, years ago she might have agreed with him, that most people in high society had confused things that were worth serious attention and things that were not. She had been a victim of that society and its petty mentality, after all. But she _missed_ how trivial things could matter so much, in that other life she once lived. It was a luxury, to be able to live such a life. A luxury she could no longer claim.

Put Pope on New Providence and give him a small plot of land and a drab cottage. Ask him to live in isolation and learn how to produce sustenance for himself. See what he would make of it all then. Oh, and give him a pirate for a companion, a pirate who would spend weeks away at a time, potentially suffering mortal danger. Miranda snorted at her own mental image of this poet she’d never met patching up James’ wounds, a couple of which had looked truly horrific.

“They’re playing ombre,” James said, eyes darting down the page. 

“Ombre!” Miranda exclaimed. That was something she hadn’t once thought about since she left London. She did not even know if she could recall all the rules, and decided it was best not to try, lest she could not.

“I’ve never played ombre,” James said.

“It was extremely popular in my youth,” Miranda said. “Still in fashion these days if its occurrence in Pope’s poem is any indication. We ought to have played it with you, James. It’s a game for three players, you see.”

James fell quiet then, contemplating the empty bottle he was still clutching in one hand.

Miranda got up and took the bottle from him. He let go of it reluctantly with sluggish fingers, and she set it aside. As she stepped back, however, James grabbed her wrist.

“The men on my crew—they’ve started calling you a witch,” he said.

“A witch, am I?” Her lips twitched in amusement. Even here on New Providence, she would not escape being called names not her own. It was strangely reassuring how some things did not change. “And what are you? My familiar?”

He cracked a smile at that, and his hand slipped from her wrist down over her palm, his fingers tracing circles there. “Yes,” he murmured. “I am your humble servant, here to do your bidding.” Something bright blazed in his eyes that were looking up at her so earnestly. He drew her hand towards him and kissed her palm, with affection that bordered on reverence.

She had not seen him like this in a long time. It made her breath catch in her throat. She could not even be sure if she was reading him right, exactly, but she—she could test it.

“You want something,” she said. “Tell me what it is you want.” 

“I want you to—” James hesitated, as if he had forgotten how to ask. He probably had. It had been so long since he had asked for anything. He could not look at her anymore, but instead stared at the floor, still clinging absently to her fingers. She took pity on him and bent to kiss the edge of his mouth.

“You want me to fuck you?” she asked, softly, her face still close to his. “Is that what you want, James?”

She saw him swallow, visibly, before looking at her again. “Yes,” he said. His eyes were big and green and mournful. Grief would never leave him, nor her either, but he liked to dress himself in it far more than she did. “Would you? Please?”

Her heart swelled. It astonished her, how _good_ he was, still, to use words like ‘please’ with her.

“Of course,” she said, and was glad that, though she had not brought any of her toys with her to New Providence, she had found a way to procure some discreetly during one particularly devastating spell of boredom. Never let it be said that Miranda Hamilton was not a resourceful woman.

“Come, James.” She tugged on his hand and he rose from the chair. She picked up the candle on the table and led him to the bedroom, and she sensed the ghost that walked with them every step of the way, in the shifting shadows thrown out by the flame.

In the bedroom, she took James’ hair out of the tie and kissed him properly. It had been so long since they had kissed like this. In the first few months or so, they had fucked with desperation, as if by fucking they could tire themselves out enough so that they would no longer have to confront the reality of the situation they were in. Then even the desperation of fucking became too much to bear, especially after the letter came with news of Thomas’ death. They slept in separate beds most of the time and fucked occasionally without passion; kisses that lasted for longer than an instant were a rarity.

As Miranda kissed James now, his mouth opening wet and warm to her, his strong arms wrapping around her waist, his broad chest solid against her, she felt, for the first time, how truly lonely she was.

She had _known_ that she was lonely. In London there had been Thomas and a steady stream of lovers, and she had never once wanted for company, whether for intercourse of the intellectual kind or of the physical kind. Here, she had nothing, had touched no one apart from James. She had been tucked away on her own on the interior of this godforsaken island for years; it went without saying that she was lonely. 

But it was not until this moment, enveloped in James’ embrace, that the full force of her loneliness slammed into her.

It made her ill, like the sea voyage to Nassau had made her ill.

James mouthed at her neck, unaware of what roiled within her. She let him. She let him remove her clothing, and when he asked, “Where is it?”, she pointed to the chest in the corner. He retrieved the dildo and the harness for her, hefting the dildo in his hand as he did so, with a kind of longing in his expression. Did he know how brittle he looked?

In measurements the dildo was indistinguishable from the one she had used most often in London, but in colour this leather was tinged dark red—the harness, too. She actually rather liked the change; it looked beautiful against her skin, striking in a way that brown was not. James got to his knees and fastened it for her now, the brush of his hands on her hips careful and _loving_ , and Miranda felt only the urge to retch.

Then, still kneeling on the floor, James closed his eyes and, unbidden, put his mouth around the dildo, almost as if he _had_ to, as if it was somehow imperative to his existence that he did this. He sucked it enthusiastically, his hands coming up to Miranda’s buttocks, squeezing them in a silent encouragement for her to push forward, deeper into his mouth. Miranda shuddered at the touch and thrust into James’ mouth, more and more of the dark red leather disappearing past James’ lips until he made helpless noises in his throat, drool running from the corner of his mouth as he took in the entire length of the dildo.

Miranda put her hands on James’ shoulders and fucked his mouth until he gagged and pulled off, spluttering, but while he panted to get his breath back, he was grabbing his crotch through his trousers. She found herself wondering how easy it was for him to pretend that the dildo was really a man’s cock if he kept his eyes shut tight enough.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her now, expectantly. By instinct, praise hovered at the tip of her tongue, waiting to be delivered, but something bitter in her denied it utterance.

“Strip and get on the bed,” she said instead. Was that a fleeting flash of injury in James’ eyes? Had he desired praise, and was hurt not to receive it? “On all fours,” she soldiered on.

He stood up and obeyed, pale torso emerging from beneath his white shirt, trousers dropping to the floor. He was hard. Honestly, Miranda had never met anybody who liked sucking cock as much as James McGraw did. (She could never think of him as Flint in her head, especially not when he was naked before her.)

He climbed onto the bed, and she followed, taking the jar of oil from the bedside table. Kneeling behind him, she coated her fingers in the oil and began to prepare James. He was relaxed from the wine—Miranda reckoned he’d actually been responsible for consuming most of the bottle, since he drank at thrice her speed. Consequently, it was not so difficult to work her fingers inside him; James welcomed the intrusion, groaning as he set his knees further apart on the bed, rolling his hips back greedily.

Miranda could not help but think of the first time she had done this, a lifetime ago now: how James had been so pliant then, and nervous, awaiting her skilful touch to shape him and fashion him anew, to guide him towards a better life, one lived in the light of love rather than in the shadow of shame. Ha. How that had turned out for both of them.

“Can I—can I touch myself?” James asked.

“No,” she said, feeling that harsh, unforgiving thing within her grow, even despite her faint glow of pleasure at the fact that he was asking for her permission.

He whined.

She took her fingers out and petted his arse, and then she spread him open with her fingers and pushed the blunt head of the dildo into him. The sight of that dark red leather sinking into James stole her breath away. It looked so _good_ ; the shade of it, intoxicating as the wine they drank, set off James’ freckled skin so perfectly that she could not believe Thomas would never be granted the chance to see this.

It made her _angry_ —and then she realised that she was already angry, that it was what had been welling up in her all along, that the nausea she had been experiencing was not simply loneliness but _rage_ : rage that she should have lost so much, as much as James had lost, but that James should have the privilege of translating his anguish into action, of risking his own life and robbing others of theirs as tribute to their broken dreams, whereas she had to be cooped up in this desolate house with its grey walls and its dread inertia, sentenced to a fate worse than death. The fate of not being _known_.

Her despair overtook her. She rammed deep into James, and he cried out, fists clenching in the sheets. She did it again, and again, fighting back against the tide of powerlessness she felt. This was the only power left to her, and she would use it.

“Miranda,” James gasped, falling onto his elbows. “ _Fuck_.” 

“Do you want me to stop?” she asked, because even if this was the only power she possessed, she respected its limits, which were not her own to choose.

“No,” James said. “Keep— _ah_ —keep going.”

She ran a hand up James’ spine, felt his body shiver underneath her touch, and then she took hold of a handful of his hair and tugged. He whimpered, arching his back gorgeously for her as she continued to drive brutally into him.

The feeling of that hair in her hand reminded her of the first morning, when she had woken up to the sound of him weeping. They had a room rented at an inn in Nassau: he was sitting at the bedside table, crumpled over it. The back of his head was an appalling mess of hair that had been hacked at haphazardly. She had pushed herself out of bed and approached him, and when she touched a hand to the top of his head, he had flinched and turned to look up at her, a fistful of cut hair still in one hand, his knife lying on the table, beside the mirror.

“James?” she had whispered, running her fingers through his hair, thumbing at the tears on his cheek with her other hand.

He had lowered his eyes before saying, with a bubbling hint of hysterical amusement, “I think you might have to help me fix my hair,” and Miranda had cradled James’ head to her belly while they laughed for a good minute or two. His hair had looked _that_ awful.

It was getting slightly longer once again, and she knew he would be cutting it soon. These days, he could never stand feeling the locks of his hair lie on the nape of his neck for more than a few weeks.

She loosened her vicious grip on his hair, combing her fingers through it gently instead, her heart afloat in an epiphany that both crushed her and uplifted her: nobody knew James either. James may have his crew, and he may have that girl, Eleanor Guthrie, who practically ruled the island and who conspired with him, but neither the girl nor James’ quartermaster, Mr Gates, ostensibly the one closest to him, _knew_ him.

The difference between herself and James, she supposed, was that James had the _opportunity_ to be known, if only he would guard himself less maniacally. But there could never be such opportunities for her. 

She slowed, wearying. She had not done this in far too long. Her thighs were weak and already sore. It had taken her a while to get used to this, she remembered now, and it was only with regular practice that her thighs had stopped quivering with the effort. She had not had any practice in years.

The last time she had done this, her husband had faced her, his expression one of pure euphoria, giddy with joy and adoration as he held her gaze and then looked down at James between them. If she closed her eyes and ignored the ache in her legs, she could almost immerse herself in that memory.

“Miranda?” James’ voice in the present brought her out of her reverie. He had twisted his head round to look at her.

She stilled completely. “I’m just… tired,” she said, though it was an inadequate description of how she felt at that moment. Her voice was shaking. “I’m… I’m sorry.” She was apologising for more than just her exhaustion.

James immediately eased himself off and turned fully to her, clutching both of her hands in his and kissing her cheek, her jaw, nuzzling her neck. “There’s no need to be sorry,” he said quietly.

“If I lie down, you can ride me,” she said, now awash with tenderness for him. “Would you like that?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at her. “Yes, I would.”

She lay down, and he straddled her and exhaled sharply as the leather filled him once more. She watched him move, thighs flexing as he raised himself and then dropped back down upon her, his cock bouncing with each movement as he gasped in exertion and pleasure.

He reached one hand behind him and— _oh_ , he was touching her, rubbing at her sex. She had not even given any thought to her own arousal in this whole time, but now, with this spectacle before her and James’ fingers coaxing her, she actually started to enjoy it, growing wet enough for him to slip a finger inside her. She moaned, biting her lip.

“Touch yourself, too,” she commanded. 

He grasped his cock at once, jerking it frantically as he kept on grinding his hips down. “Oh God, Miranda!” He threw his head back, exposing the long line of his neck, illumed with bright freckles. Not forgetting her pleasure, he dipped another finger inside her. This vision of him, one hand fervently working himself and his other arm contorted back, straining for _her_ sake, his body on display in the most stunning way as he grunted and cursed and fucked himself on her dildo, was something she had never even imagined in her wildest fantasies back in London, when such scenes would have felt within her reach. Now? Now she could hardly convince herself she wasn’t dreaming. If _this_ was still possible, even now, what else might also be such?

His fingers pressed hard within her and her thighs tensed; she moaned as her climax rushed through her, making her tremble all over.

He sneaked one arm under her waist and pulled her to sit upright, hugging her to him as he continued to rock down against her, his free hand still pumping his cock in the narrow space between their bodies. She gathered her arms around him and kissed him, tucking a strand of his hair behind his ear. Her fingers lingered on the golden stud in his earlobe. She had pierced it for him, that first week on the island.

“How do you think I would look with an earring?” James had asked her, his gaze flickering to one of her ears. She had got her ears pierced when she was but a girl, and had no memory of the actual moment of piercing.

“If you’d like to find out,” she had replied, “I could do it for you.”

He had made a very small sound when the needle had punctured his skin, and afterwards, with the stud freshly adorning his ear, she had kissed him and said, “You look so very handsome.”

And he did look so handsome. He always did. But it was another thing Thomas would never get to see. James with an earring.

She nipped at his ear now, flicked her tongue over the stud. “You’ve been so wonderful, James,” she murmured, caressing his back. “You look so pretty with my cock up your arse, fucking yourself on it like a good boy. You sucked my cock so _well_. So needy and eager to please, so beautiful on your knees, right where you belong.”

He groaned, and she knew that this was what he _had_ been waiting for, what he had hoped she would offer him, and she was sorry that she had not given it to him earlier.

“My dear, sweet James, come for me,” she said, looking into his green eyes, praying that he would see her apology in her eyes and hear it in her words. “You deserve it. You’ve been so brilliant.”

His expression was almost one of absolution, his watery eyes swimming with relief to have her approval again. He dropped his head on her shoulder and buried his cries in the crook of her neck as he came, his seed painting her breasts.

They held each other for another moment and Miranda kissed him again, soft and chaste.

“Thank you,” he said, hoarsely.

“You’re welcome,” she said. He looked a little less haunted than he had before, so she considered it a job well done.

She unbuckled the harness and laid it and the dildo on a chair, before cleaning herself and James with a rag from the nightstand. After blowing out the candle, she settled down upon the bed next to James and drew a blanket over the two of them, and he curled towards her, one hand landing on her waist.

“I wish you really were a witch,” he said, fatigue slurring his voice. “A necromancer.”

She sighed. “Necromancy never ends well, darling,” she said.

“Can’t be much worse than whatever hell we’re in now,” he mumbled.

She swallowed down the pain that statement caused her, like shattered glass slicing her open, and she stroked his hair until he succumbed to the spell of sleep, his breathing slowed and even. Then, very quietly, she allowed herself to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> *whispers* _The Rape of the Lock_ (the full version with five cantos, that includes the game of ombre mentioned in this fic) was only published in 1714. But please pretend it was published a few years earlier because I think this fic makes more sense emotionally if it's set around 1710.
> 
> Comments are dearly appreciated. <3 Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com)!


End file.
